Cruz, along with every other Republican senator that accompanied him on the floor during his speech, voted in favor of invoking cloture on the motion to proceed.

This sounds confusing — after all, Cruz just spent nearly an entire day railing against passage of the bill. But this was Cruz’s plan all along. He opposes invoking cloture to end debate on the bill — that vote will come either Friday or Saturday.

Here’s what Cruz said on the Senate floor Tuesday (emphasis added):

“The central vote the Senate will take on this fight will not occur today and it will not occur tomorrow. The first vote we are going to take on this is a vote on what is called cloture on the motion to proceed. Very few people not on this floor have any idea what that means and even, I suspect, a fair number of people on this floor are not quite sure what that means. That will simply be a vote whether to take up this bill and to begin debating this bill. I expect that vote to pass overwhelmingly, if not unanimously. Everyone agrees we ought to take this up, we ought to start this conversation.

The next vote we take will occur on Friday or Saturday and it will be on what is called cloture on the bill. That is the vote that matters. Cloture on the bill, the vote Friday or Saturday, is the vote that matters.

Because the cloture vote has now passed, there’s now a 30-hour shot clock in the Senate that allows for debate on the bill.

Cruz signaled a willingness on Wednesday to accelerate parliamentary procedure so that the Senate could hold that all-important vote — on cloture to end debate — on Friday, so that more people would be paying attention.

This is the vote that “matters” — and it’s also where things will get awkward. At this point, the bill will still have the House language that strips funding for Obamacare, which is what conservatives have pressed for all summer.

Republicans’ choice, then, is to either filibuster the bill that includes the language they wanted — and essentially endorse a government shutdown — or to essentially allow Reid to be able to introduce the amendment and strip the language.

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Constitutional Republic Of The United States

True Federalism.

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.

It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”

– Thomas Jefferson

Unconstitutional Powers By Repetition

Usurpations by one branch of government, of powers entrusted to a coequal branch, are not rendered constitutional by repetition.

The United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v. Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).